Chapter 109: Planning Something
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Chapter 109: Planning Something

“Ergh... I think I am going to be sick.” 

(“ The consequences of your own actions ”) 

Don’t try to sound smart, every action has an outcome, and that’s why they are an action. 

(“ Oh dear, you have sounded out what I was doing, whatever shall I do? ”) 

Shut up or help me? 

(“ Neither of those options sounds particularly enjoyable or feasible ”) 

My meeting with Nina ended with success. Which brought me some needed relief, in the form of an endless supply of mana recovery potions and crystals.  

Which I was currently chugging a fair amount down.

Espr had mentioned these mana recoverable consumable items wouldn’t be my perfect solution.

And it was certainly looking that way, but I was certainly achieving a better result than what Espr was probably expecting. 

First the issues. There was the one Espr mentioned about ‘junk mana’, a new concept for me that I was now made all too aware of now that my body couldn’t eject automatically. It made up a small percentage of the mana in each potion, but it was a small chunk that couldn’t be probably absorbed into my body. Dealing with a little bit of this junk mana was fine, but as it piled up, it felt as if there were stones forming in my veins. Hypothetically, of course, if there were actual stones there, I could solve the problem by ripping them out of my flesh and having the wound healed. 

Sadly, it was more of a soul issue, another one that was added to the pile.

Espr was also right that it was nearly more mana inefficient using these potions than simply saving my mana, as trying to force out the junk mana burned up nearly the whole mana gained from the potion. Nearly. If I stockpiled a lot of the junk mana, I could make the trade favourable for me. Which meant more potions downed the hatch.

The junk mana did come with problems because, of course, it did. There was a reason it wasn’t called something nice like flowery mana or something. The junk mana slowed my mana flow and increased the difficulty of controlling my mana. The added pain it brought wasn’t bad in comparison to all the other pain I was constantly feeling. I did wish I didn’t feel it, but soul pain wasn’t something that could be turned off, disappointedly.

I grabbed a bottle of soda and washed my stomach with it. I was sitting outside my backyard as the afternoon moon rose into the sky.

Nina had what I wanted delivered to me earlier in the day. I thought about doing my experiments elsewhere, but I wanted to be somewhat bloody comfortable.

I told my family I was doing experiments to test my mana capacity, which was true, I just left out everything else.

Mother didn’t really question it, as she saw this as something I would do. Not sure if I should've taken that positively or not. Mella was interested in trying, so I gave her one of the large potions, which nearly made her throw up. Not my fault; I warned her eight times, and Lila warned her another two. Lila had to leave to meet up with Nina again, and Tyell was looking at me strangled.

He was clearly worried; that part was obvious, but it was hard to tell if that was because of what I was currently doing or something else, as I saw his eyes wash over me a few times, like even before I began my drinking binge.

Maybe I should ask him later… I kept that thought stored for later.

There was another issue with the process, which was how much mana I could actually take in from these items.

All that math with gaining and losing mana had been with the maximum amount of mana gained from the potions, which sadly wasn’t the case.

I learned of another problem when it came to absorbing the mana from recovery items, a problem that no one would ever have. If the person’s mana is already filled, the efficiency of the recovery would be shit, but the junk mana would be left in the system.

The additional mana wouldn’t stay in my body and would fly away, except the junk   which stayed stuck in my body as if my natural mana was stuck to it.

This wasn’t even due to the injuries to my soul; the mana leaving was a simple natural process of where was it to go when the container was already full.

Damn the stars, this is tiring.

My answer was to forcibly grab it and stick it down into my soul, which also brought pain. I could make a drinking game with the amount of soul-related pains I kept on collecting. 

Name: Ceella Stella (Celestira Luxpoir) | Race: [Human?]
Level 263 | Awakened
Mana: 155% Starlight: 100%

 

All the experiment had left me still at a total net negative, but I was confident I could slow it down and at least make the process neutral before turning positive.

Starlight was still partially stored in my soul, but because its dedicated area hadn’t taken damage that wasn’t unrecoverable, it could still be stored and used properly.

Of course for mana, the process would become easier once I got back in the normal range of under 100% instead of my absurd effort of stockpiling more mana than my body could handle. The excess mana I gained from the item stayed within the soul well enough, but the extra I added in on top of that had more trouble.

During a moment where I caught my breath in between downing mana potions to fill my overflowing dam of mana with more mana. I asked a question.

Are there really no tips you can give me? 

It wasn’t the first one I had asked during this session; it likely wasn’t going to be the last.

(“ None, your soul and body are both currently not suited to store such vast quantities of mana, the best you can do is to try and brute force it ”) 

Can’t I compress it to make it fit better? 

(“ Mana naturally compresses in large quantities, but that doesn’t affect how much total mana you can store. Even if you wanted to compress it further, which wouldn’t accomplish anything, you don’t have the capabilities to do that ”) 

Thanks for the kind words. 

(“ You’re welcome ”) 

Even if I make the mana potions and crystals absorb and cleanse process a net positive, that would still only be true for the peacetime me. I needed to be able to use mana to fight, and I wouldn’t have an endless supply of potions around me at all times. 

There was also the bigger issue of Espr’s deal and [Primal Guardian Lord]’s level. 

The true purpose of my experimenting with mana recovery items was twofold. One was to bandage my wounds, the obvious one. The second was a risk.

Having that much mana made me feel powerful.

And if I wanted to be free, I needed power.

If levelling wasn’t going to work and my other options were limited.

I turned to something I had a brief taste of.

I don’t know if Espr knew what I was planning, as I didn’t know if its ability to read my feelings and kind of thoughts improved or weakened with all the soul damage I took.

Of course, there were many risks with that arguably very stupid but simple plan. If running out of mana was a problem, just make sure mana was never low–as something even a toddler would think of. Last time I held that much mana, I couldn’t control it; instead, I could only really direct it the way I wanted.

The last time was a failure, and I didn’t even have a properly functioning soul at the moment, unless I could find another solution that wasn’t selling my soul to something else. It was my only solution. 

So I needed something that could generate a ludicrous amount of mana for me to take in.

Trying to find Craftalot might be a solution, but from a quick talk with Nina, he wasn’t someone she was in contact with.

Instead, I had another more common–but a sprinkle of more risk involved–solution.

I needed a dungeon core.

Took a little long to finish this one. I actually never fully recovered from being sick, so we have reached a new record of about 12 weeks of being sick! Woohoooo! Sigh Every time I thought I got better it stayed that way for 2~3 days before bam! Anyway, you might be thinking me being sick was what delayed this chapter.

Nope.

I just played too much Minecraft (And had a bunch of extra work stuff to do, but much funnier to say it was just because of Minecraft, but end of year work is busy).

Have a lovely day everyone, see you all next week! Or this week, I was a lot later in finishing the chapter than expected so it might be the next week anyway....

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